Schenker Documents Online

Colloquy

Major Collections

Of Schenker's Papers and Other Materials

Introduction

Correspondence to and from Heinrich Schenker survives in about twenty
depositories, located in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United
States. Some items are held in national, civic, and university libraries and
archives, some in the files of commercial companies, some in private possession,
whether by the descendants of recipients, or by other persons into whose hands
they have subsequently come. There are undoubtedly yet-to-be-identified caches
of correspondence, and such caches, for which Schenker
Documents Online actively searches, come to light from time to time.
Diaries and lessonbooks, to the contrary, survive each in a single location.

Of these depositories, four stand out as holding the
largest quantities of material, and details of them and their locations are
given below.

Background: 1935–42

What happened after Heinrich Schenker's death on January 14, 1935 should,
however, first be briefly outlined here. Whereas most of his books and scores
were sold through the book trade, the huge mass of papers that Schenker left
behind, including drafts and fair copies of texts for publications (prospective
or actual), analyses and sketches of music, handwritten notes and memos (some
even on tram tickets and restaurant bills), drafts and file copies of
correspondence (sent or unsent), correspondence received, diaries, lessonbooks,
scrapbooks, miscellaneous other materials, and copies of his own publications,
were retained by his widow Jeanette, who sought over the next few years to
impose some organization on them.

Between Heinrich's death and her own deportation to Theresienstadt (Terezin) in
1942, Jeanette gave or sold some of her husband's papers to friends and pupils;
thus Felix Salzer purchased part of the collection in 1936, Otto Vrieslander
re-acquired most of the letters he had written to Heinrich, and materials were
passed to Wilhelm Furtwängler. In particular and still more significantly,
Jeanette entrusted a large quantity of his working papers to Ernst Oster (a
pupil of Oswald Jonas), who then emigrated to the USA; these passed at his death
to the New York Public Library.

The remainder of the papers and other materials, stored in a large trunk, she
entrusted to Erwin Ratz, a close friend who for some time succeeded in shielding
her from the Nazis. Ratz himself remained in Vienna throughout the war and kept
the trunk safe; then Oswald Jonas, a pupil of Schenker's who had emigrated to
the USA in 1938, returned to Vienna some time after the war and acquired the
trunk from Ratz. He shipped it back to the USA, where from 1965 to his death in
1978 he taught at the University of California at Riverside, to which he
bequeathed its contents.

Oswald Jonas Memorial Collection

This collection of materials (c. 75,000 leaves) comprises Schenker's diaries,
the bulk of his correspondence, spanning 1888–1935, his theoretical,
critical, and analytical works and editions in manuscript, proof, and
published versions (many with annotations and corrections), scores, and his
own compositions. In addition to these, the collection also holds the papers
of Oswald Jonas himself, including correspondence, manuscript and published
works and other materials, the papers of Schenker's life-long friend Moriz
Violin (who had emigrated in 1939 and lived and worked in San Francisco),
including correspondence and memorabilia, and also other correspondence
acquired subsequently, and photographs and portraits of the Schenkers, their
family and circle of friends. A checklist of the materials has been
published and made online.

New York, USA : New York Public Library, Performing Arts Library, Music
Division

Oster Collection

This collection of Schenker's materials, deposited at the New York Public
Library in 1979/80 after the death of Ernst Oster, includes correspondence
with the publishers Universal Edition of Vienna (939 items), Drei Masken
Verlag of Munich and Waldheim-Eberle of Vienna (384 items), and to and from
others, spanning his entire career. It also includes Schenker's lessonbooks
(1912–31) and lesson notes (1931/32), and his scrapbook preserving clippings
from newspapers and journals (1902–35). In addition, it contains many music
analyses and graphs (mostly organized by composer), preparatory manuscript
and typed materials for publications, including texts of unpublished works,
and a collection of books, pamphlets, and scores (many with annotations and
corrections). The collection was preserved and catalogued in 1988-90 with
funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a finding-list
published. The entire collection is available on microfilm.

Kosovsky, Robert, comp., The Oster
Collection: Papers of Heinrich Schenker: A Finding List (New
York: New York Public Library, 1990)

Felix Salzer Papers

This collection, bequeathed to the Library in 2000, holds the papers of Felix
Salzer, a pupil of Schenker's who left Austria in 1939 and emigrated to the
USA the following year, taught at the David Mannes Music School and
subsequently also at Queen's College and the Graduate Center of the City
University of New York. The collection includes a portion of Schenker's
papers, notably the latter's notes on the J. S. Bach "Generalbaßbüchlein,"
his "Von der Stimmführung des Generalbasses," and his commentary on C. P. E.
Bach's Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu
spielen, and numerous analyses and sketches, including
preparatory materials for the projected second volume of Fünf Urlinie-Tafeln. In addition, it holds Salzer's own
correspondence with many people, including twenty-seven items from Heinrich
Schenker, communications with Jeanette, and correspondence between Hans
Weisse and Schenker. The papers were catalogued in 2007, and the catalogue
published online.

Musiksammlung [Music Collection]

This collection comprises 408 letters, mostly in Schenker's hand, to his
principal publisher, Universal Edition of Vienna, and thirty-five from
Universal Edition to Schenker, spanning 1908-31, on long loan from Universal
Edition since 1976. Regrettably, the letters from Schenker to UE are missing
for the years 1920–23 inclusive. There is no published catalogue.

There is also a small number of letters between Jeanette Schenker and
Universal Edition dating from after Heinrich's death, held at the company's
archive at its head office in Vienna.

This archive holds correspondence from Schenker to his publisher J. G. Cotta of
Stuttgart, interleaved with carbon copies of letters from Cotta to himself,
spanning 1905–21 (179 items). There are also letters from Schenker to August
Halm in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv itself (16 items). There is no published
catalogue.

For full list of the depositories of Schenker materials, with the sigla used by
Schenker Documents Online, see Abbreviations and Sigla.

The information contained in the above introduction and collection descriptions
is drawn from the sources already cited, and also from the following: